Cartesia provides a cloud‑based text‑to‑speech API that delivers natural, human‑like voices in over 26 languages, all built, trained, and hosted within the European Union to ensure GDPR compliance and data sovereignty. The service offers real‑time streaming with first‑audio latency as low as 111 ms and supports voice cloning, speed control, and edge‑case handling for numbers, dates, and addresses. It integrates via a drop‑in SDK for pipelines such as Pipecat or LiveKit, with on‑premise and enterprise options available.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Many digital applications require real-time, high-quality text‑to‑speech (TTS) for voice agents, but existing services often have latency, limited language support, and data residency concerns, especially for European companies subject to GDPR and the US Cloud Act.
Solution
Cartesia offers an EU‑hosted TTS API that delivers natural, real‑recorded voices in over 26 languages with first audio generated in under 100 ms. The platform includes built‑in handling of edge cases such as numbers, dates, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, ensuring accurate pronunciation across diverse content. Voice cloning and streaming capabilities allow developers to integrate custom or pre‑recorded voices with minimal code, while on‑premise and dedicated deployment options provide full data sovereignty for enterprise customers. Pricing is based on generated audio minutes, and the service complies with GDPR, keeping all data within European jurisdiction.
Target Audience
Primary customers are developers and product teams building voice agents for sectors such as finance, healthcare, retail, hospitality, telecommunications, technology, and government that require European data residency and low‑latency TTS.
Features
- Real‑recorded, human‑like voices with support for 26+ languages, accents, and dialects
- Sub‑100 ms time‑to‑first‑audio for low‑latency streaming applications
- Integrated text normalizer that correctly pronounces numbers, dates, addresses, currencies, phone numbers, and email addresses
- Voice cloning and streaming APIs compatible with pipelines such as Pipecat and LiveKit
- EU‑hosted infrastructure guaranteeing GDPR compliance and protection from the US Cloud Act
- On‑premise and dedicated deployment options with custom concurrency limits and 24/7 support
- Word‑level timestamps, break tokens, speed control, and dictionary/IPA support for fine‑grained output control